Bravery, Preparation and Sailing, pt2

Hilo, Hawaii, 10-NOV-2019 – After the preparation and finally leaving, there is being in the place that we’d read about: offshore, no land in sight, and, by some lights, nothing but danger.

As we were repeatedly told by our offshore sailor friends, who have been our biggest fans and supporters, we were now members of the family of Bluewater Sailors.

Many sailors tell us about the peace and tranquility, comfort they feel being at sea, alone with nothing but wind, waves and the horizon. Our friend Ray Penson, tell us how much he looks forward to the world shrinking to just his boat and the horizon.

Neither Jennifer nor I have ever sailed out of sight of land with anyone else. I generally read a lot, think a lot and then go do anything I am planning to do. So, we’ve never had anyone on board guiding us when we do something new.

Sailing off shore was the first time for both of us — In a couple, the bonding of doing new things together is, I think, one of the strongest.

Jennifer and I had been out of sight of land on our crossing to and from Haida Gwaii. Though out of sight of land, it was only a 60-mile crossing; we’d make landfall before night fall. We would never be more that 30 miles from land and less than an hour from rescue – though Hecate Strait is agreed to be the fifth most dangerous body of water in the world.

Going offshore for me, was a feeling of seriousness: This is it. There is no one to rescue us; we are on our own. Now is when we learn what we know and whether we have prepared properly. For me, it isn’t calmness, but the emotions that are unsteady, like terror, or hysteria, or even the giggles go away. This is real, it is serious, one can die.

It took quite a while to really relax, not until well into the Hilo leg, may be near the end of the Hilo leg, because everything was new.

I found myself, when I wasn’t paying attention, assuming there was land leeward of us, behind the Genoa.

There was also the continuousness of the journey. The punctation of day and night was different, because nothing stopped. The boat kept sailing: sails needed monitoring, as did the course and the horizon. After we lost all self steering, one of us was at the wheel at all time.

That the boat continued to sail, and when we were sailing hard, to rush through the water, be banged by windward or leeward waves, was not quiet confusing, not quite unsettling, and not quite wrong, but more than out of the ordinary.

Steering at night in steady wind was just a matter of staying on a compass course.

In the day, we could see waves coming towards us, or overtaking us, or coming on our quarter. We could see unusually large waves and when waves from different directions wound stack into the cumulative height of the two. The strike of the wave, the twist of the hull and hiss of the water passing beneath us, would follow the precursor of seeing the wave.

At night before the moon rises, after it sets, on moonless nights and nights that are heavily overcast, the boat twists off course as the invisible wave scoots the stern around, or slaps the side of the hull like a cricket bat. The fall from course can between ten degrees and thirty-five degrees depending on sail balance, wave size, where the wave pushes the boat and how exhausted you are.

After a surprising short while, I forgot that the boat was being pushed around by waves and the effort just became a matter of steering the boat in the right direction, like driving a car fast on a hillocked gravel road.

In the beginning, there was no doubt that we had no excess energy or bandwidth to do more than sail the boat, but once the sea sickness passed, we cooked, read books and made blog posts. We also did maintenance and repairs.

Over time, other things changed. Looking out over the swells extending to the horizon changed into looking at sand dunes on a desert-scape. More benign than threatening. Large waves became more passive: they will all pass under us. Following waves will shoot us downward at 12 knots, waves on the beam roar and sizzle as they pass beneath us.

Sleep deprivation, once we completely lost self steering, was the hardest thing to combat. The world does not stop, something could go wrong.

Jennifer’s competence was something I never easily relied on and I should have more comfort with it. I would like to say that Jennifer says she is not competent, but she doesn’t. She offers, selflessly and cheerfully, to take over tasks when she is terrified. She is completely competent at any task she offers to take over.

I suspect that it is something in me. I think steering a boat, as an example, somehow makes me special, and am unsure, or suspicious that anyone else can. But Jennifer can and did for hours per shift. Unlike me, Jennifer can also cede responsibility to someone else (me) and sleep deeply, waking rested.

[On Caro Babbo, Jennifer is co-captain. When under power, Caro Babbo is her command. Jennifer does ALL docking, and ALL navigating. It is a running joke, which is way too close to the truth, that I never have any idea where we are.]

We’re here in Hawaii, in Hilo on the Big Island, Hawai’i. Caro Babbo is stern tied to a wall in Radio Bay. The surf crashes on the break water. We sometimes work under the metal awning at the canoe club on the beach.

We’re here in Hawaii and there’s only one way we could have gotten here with Caro Babbo: we must have sailed. We must be blue water sailors.